you cry, you die. chapter 2

He flagged down another tuk-tuk and went back to his hotel. He paid the driver, didn't wait for the change, and stepped back out into the streets of Bangkok. To shave off time and avoid the main drag where the tourist traffic bottlenecked, he cut down a narrow soi behind the block to head back toward his room.
It was pitch black, dripping with condensation from the overhead AC units, and stank of piss and rotting garbage. Perfect. Exactly the kind of choke point an amateur would avoid and a pro would use. Vic kept his hands deep in his pockets, his fingers curled around the grip of the compact blade clipped to his waistband, eyes scanning every shadow.
Halfway down, tucked safely beneath the hum of a rusted transformer box, he pulled the burner phone. He keyed in the sequence for Henderson, pressing the earpiece tight against his ear.
Vic didn't get to finish the call.
Something hard and heavy hit Vic square between the shoulder blades. The pavement came up fast and hard, knocking the wind out of his lungs in a wet wheeze. The sat-phone flew from his grip, skittering across the tarmac.
Before Vic could roll, a palm slammed down on the back of his head, grinding his face into the grit. A second later, an aerosol canister hissed right beside his ear.
Liquid fire exploded across his cheekbones and eyelids.
It felt like someone had thrown a bucket of boiling acid and crushed chillies straight into his face. Vic’s eyes slammed shut, tearing uncontrollably, burning down into his throat.
Hands were all over him now—expert, practiced, military. Ripping through his pockets, patting down his rig.
An American voice, flat and bored, spoke from right above Vic: "You’re coming with us for a little chat, boy."
Vic tried to twist away, bracing for the boots, but the weight across his spine was too heavy. Then came the crunch—the sharp, unmistakable sound of a heavy combat boot coming down hard on the sat-phone, grinding the casing, screen, and microchips into useless plastic shrapnel against the concrete.
Vic threw his head back to clear the blinding agony, but the American didn't waste time. The heavy polymer stock of an M4 came down in a brutal, sweeping arc across the side of his temple.
A blinding white flash went off inside Vic’s skull, and then the Bangkok night went completely, mercifully black.
He woke with a heavy canvas hood clamped tight over the skull, reeking of stale sweat and machine oil.
His wrists were cuffed behind his back, the plastic zip-ties cutting into the flesh and nerve tissue beneath them. Every movement in the shoulder caused an intense burning sensation to run up through the socket. His face was swollen and bruised from where he had been beaten, his eyelids throbbing like someone had hit him with a white-hot crowbar.
Rough hands grabbed hold of him under the armpits and yanked him to his feet. They pulled him out of the concrete box and across a rough floor that tore through the knees of his trousers.
"You ready to talk?"
Deep voice. American accent. State Department tone, pretending to be a local sheriff but too clean-smelling.
Vic wheezed a cough. "It’d fucking help if I knew the question, dickhead."
A backhand slapped across the cheekbone with a splashing sound. Vic’s head jerked to the right and he felt his teeth click together.
"Let's start with your name," the gravelly voice continued with a mocking tone of patronizing slowness that spoke of Farm training.
"Fucking Robin Hood."
The second backhand was much stronger and caught him right across the jaw. The wooden chair tipped backwards with legs scraping on concrete, and he fell onto the floor, hard enough to make his back teeth rattle with impact. Arms yanked on the top rail and hoisted the chair straight back up.
"Right. Let's try again. What's your name?"
Vic said nothing, staring into the darkness of the hood. Pointless to waste oxygen when they already had their script memorised. This wasn’t an interrogation – this was an extraction.
"What's your name?"
Still no response.
With an exasperated sigh, the American said, "Tie him down to the table. Take his boots and socks off."
Arms pulled Vic out of the chair and flung him flat onto the edge of a cold steel table. Straps ratcheted tight around the chest, thighs, and biceps until circulation was cut off completely. Rough fingers unlaced the trainers and ripped them off along with the socks, leaving Vic’s soles bare against the cold.
He didn't resist. Nowhere to go and no sense wasting effort against the furniture.
"What's your name?"
Silence.
"Do it."
The sound of a sharp whistle as something sliced through the air.
Then the fire hit.
It began in the soles of his feet—a searing, bone-crushing flash that burned right up through the center of his body and struck the back of his teeth.
Whoosh.
The cane sliced through the air once more.
Vic clenched his jaw, biting back the taste of copper and salt. "Is that the fucking best you can do?"
He immediately regretted it when the words left his mouth. The interrogator did not lose tempo. The swing of the cane changed, targeting him from the soles of his feet to the tips of his fingers, spread out on the wooden table.
Whoosh. Crack.
The wood lashed across the nail beds of his fingers. Once more. And once more. The shock waves surged right up his arms, burning hot nerves.
In the midst of the pain, a cold, grim satisfaction set into the back of Vic's head. At least they were leaving his right index finger alone, his trigger finger.
Because the moment he got out of this shit, the yank would feel real fucking pain.
The swishing noise ceased for a blissful moment. Then he realized his worst nightmare was about to come true. The rush of panic did not wash over him in waves. It exploded in his head like a flashbang.
Vic felt the temperature in the room dip, his blood turning into mud in his veins. He wished the glare of the overhead lights would mask the sweat trickling down his dirty face, but he'd played this game long enough to know how it works. They always had the angles.
Two of them humped the hefty battery of the heavy-duty truck, dropping it to the concrete with a thud. Then the multi-stranded copper wire and the heavy jawed steel crocodile clamps followed. This was standard field equipment. Nothing fancy. But effective.
The operator didn't waste any time with a prelude. He stripped off the insulation, twisted the strands around the teeth of the clamps and went straight for his earlobes.
Vic clenched his teeth as the current pierced through him, a violent tremor rattling his bones. He didn't utter a word.
The yank made a signal to stop. The clamps snapped open and the metal was released with a metallic click. He sucked ragged air for a moment before they put the clamp jaws onto his chest again. Another strong surge of the current struck his chest muscles, making his spine cringe. Again he was silent.
The American standing in the shadow evaluated the data. He understood they had reached the threshold and the juice wasn't going to crack him up today.
He gave a quick nod to the door.
"Take him down to the box," the yank said.
The guard brought him to the room and pushed him inside, removing his hood and locking the door behind him.
Vic felt like a railway spike was driven through the left side of his temple and twisted there. Any attempt to swallow brought up a copper taste mixed with battery acid. The reverberation of the DC current was humming in his molars.
Vic was lying on the bed with his body leaning forward and supporting his weight with his thighs.
Behind Vic's back, his wrists were firmly fastened with the industrial-grade black zip-ties. These weren't the flimsy zip-ties for household use, but tough, thick ones with locking barbs. They understood their business. They were fastened so tight that the teeth were digging straight into the tendons of his wrists, cutting off the blood flow. His fingers started turning cold and numb.
He took a shallow breath through his nose. Panic consumes oxygen and he lacked it under the canvas.
“Calm down, Vic. Think it through.
Option one: Wait to see what they have in mind. Bad idea. The last one who interrogated him with that jury-rigged power source had an unstable temper. If he came back and found him nonresponsive, he would probably skip the interrogation and dump the body in the drainage canal.
Option two: Break the ties. Vic rolled his shoulders, shifted his weight and tried to bend his arms outward. The plastic resisted. The friction rubbed the skin off, but the zip-ties didn't budge. Brute force won't do; it would only tighten them.
Option three: There wasn't an option three.”
Vic didn't lose his head in panic. Panic consumes oxygen and oxygen leads to mistakes.
Vic shifted his weight and squatted on the bed, moving his bound hands to the front by placing them under his buttocks and passing his feet through his arms. His shoulders protested with a sharp spike of pain which he suppressed. Now, when his hands were free, he was able to take care of the bindings.
Then,
The teeth on a plastic flex-cuff lock tight, but the weakest point is not the band, but the locking pawl inside the plastic housing. Vic knew that brute strength won't snap heavy-duty zip ties if your leverage is restricted, but friction might help. Vic spotted a rough concrete surface on the wall and placed the locking block of the plastic cuff on it.
Using a rapid motion, he started grinding the plastic housing against the surface. Within a couple of seconds, the friction made the plastic housing wear out. Vic sharply moved his wrists in opposite directions and the cuff broke apart.
Now he was free of the restraints, but still unarmed and without keys. All he had was momentum and surprise.
The door was a heavy wood one with a standard latch. He tested it. It wasn't unlocked. Vic pressed his ear to it and listened. He could hear the cadence of one pair of boots of a heavy-set guy who didn't bother to lift his heels while walking.
Without hesitation, Vic stepped back, squatted to the floor, put his hands behind his back, pretending they were still cuffed, and waited.
The walls were dripping moisture under the sickly yellow glare of the corridor bulb leaking through the gaps of the wood door.
Clank. The key turned in the rusted deadlock. The heavy bolt went back with a snick.
The door creaked open, spilling the wedge of pale light on the grease-stained floor.
The guard stepped inside. He was a big guy, thick-fingered, wearing grease-stained fatigues, a sub-machine gun muzzle-down across his chest and a combat knife at his waist.
In his left hand, he carried a dented tin bowl of grey water-slop and a bottle of drinking water. He dropped the bowl at his feet; the grey liquid slopped over the edge.
"Eat," he said in a grunted whisper, blank expressionless eyes fixed at him. He bent to put the water bottle near him. The posture was broken. Weight on the front. That was all the window he had.
Vic's right hand shot out, fingers wrapping around the handle of the knife.
Before he could straighten, Vic stabbed him upward straight into the soft flesh beneath the ear. The guard uttered a choked, wet rattle.
Warm, arterial spray sprayed over Vic's knuckles and spattered the brick wall behind him. He clawed at his throat, his fingers slipping in his own blood, bulging with unadulterated shock. Vic put his weight to the knife, twisting it in deep. He buckled with knees hitting the floor with a thud, taking the sub-machine gun down with him in a metallic rattle.
Absolute silence ensued, save for the sound of blood spurting down the guard's throat.
Vic crouched down and his bloody fingers caught the sling of the weapon. Checking the breech—round chambered, safety off—he stepped out to the corridor. At the top of the stairwell, two shadows detached themselves from the angles. Vic didn't wait for them to shout. A short, controlled three-round burst punched through the gloom; both dropped like sacks of wet laundry.
The gunfire shattered the silence of the safehouse, setting off a scramble of chaos. Shouts echoed up the hallway as guards rushed out of the surrounding rooms, boots pounding the floorboards with raised weapons.
Vic didn't give them a chance to coordinate.
He slammed his boot hard against the first bedroom door, splintering it inward just as a frantic guard raised a rifle toward the noise. Vic put two rounds through his chest before the man could pull the trigger.
Pivoting instantly, he kicked the next door off its hinges. Another gunman was bolting toward the doorway with a sub-machine gun levelled, but Vic caught him mid-stride, dropping him with a clean shot to the head. A third door burst open, and a panicked watcher lunge out into the hall—only to take a single round straight to the centre of mass, collapsing hard against the wall.
With the upper floor secured of the guards and the American nowhere in sight, Vic took the steps two at a time, rounded the ground-floor landing, and put a single round into the chest of another guard who was blindly sweeping the exit.
He checked the remaining side rooms off the ground-floor corridor, delivering one last brutal kick to a wooden door. Empty.
A sudden, angry chatter of automatic fire chewed through the plaster beside his ear, sending a cloud of grey dust into his face. No hesitation. He threw his weight forward, cleared the threshold, and dropped straight into the choking, humid streets of Bangkok.
The humidity hit like a wet wool blanket the second Vic cleared the doorway of the house. It tasted of charcoal smoke, stagnant canal water, and shit.
He didn't break stride. His lungs burned, dragging the thick air down into his chest, every breath feeling like he was inhaling steam. Thirty-four degrees Celsius at midnight, and he was running for his life through the narrow back alleys of Bangkok.
Boot heels crunched on gravel just behind him—too close. A shout cut through the hum of distant traffic.
Vic threw his hands up, catching the top of a crumbling brick courtyard wall. He hauled his weight over in one fluid, desperate motion, scraping his palms raw on the jagged mortar. He dropped hard onto the slick concrete of a narrow lane below, his knees buckling before he forced himself back up.
There was no time to look back. He plunged deeper into the labyrinth, ducking beneath a web of low-hanging electrical cables that hissed in the dense air.
Left, right, alleyway, dead end—
He veered hard down a sliver of space between two corrugated tin shacks. A stray mangy dog bolted from the shadows, barking furiously, but Vic was already gone, melting into the pitch-black shadows of a laundry-strung thoroughfare, leaving his pursuers guessing at the next turn.